Nothing beyond our Reach!
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: A few years ago, Voyager broke the transwarp barrier but after what happened to Tom Paris no-one was brave enough to make another attempt. But what if Seven of Nine worked out how to get Voyager to go to transwarp... and decided the crew didn't deserve it?


I don't own Star Trek Voyager, just this short story where Seven decides whether to get the crew home or if they even deserve it. Enjoy.

It was always curious that someone experienced with transwarp technology like Seven was never able to get the crew back to Earth, but what if she had found a way but decided the crew didn't deserve it?

* * *

"Nothing beyond our Reach."

There were times Seven of Nine questioned if the crew of Voyager were even able to not give up when they stumbled across a problem, but the former Borg Drone knew better than to voice her thoughts out to the rest of the crew; they wouldn't listen to her in the first place, nor would they understand her points. They would give her weak excuses that wouldn't make any sense to her.

But as she went through their log recordings to help her acquaint herself better with their journey back to earth, Seven found something that instantly attracted her attention. Voyager had nearly managed to get back to the Alpha Quadrant on many occasions, and there had been dozens of opportunities for them to get back home, but the attempts had not succeeded.

However, one attempt carried out by the crew amid the time where Michael Jonas was a Kazon spy, though it hadn't been known at the time, was intriguing to her.

The breaking of the maximum warp barrier.

It was such an unexpected entry in the logs Seven almost didn't believe it, but it was true though she was taken by surprise by the entry since she had never known of anyone who had broken the maximum warp barrier.

The Borg had never heard or encountered of a species who had broken this particular speed barrier before, but the primary reason the Collective had never tried to break it was because it had honestly never occurred to the Borg to try. Seven didn't doubt if the Queen herself decided to draw upon the minds of all of the propulsion experts, warp field theorists, and practical engineers that had been assimilated over the centuries, the Collective could easily find a solution to the problem. The only difficulty was finding a mind who was ingenious enough to 'think outside of the box,' as she had often heard some members of the crew say from time to time. But the truth was they didn't need too - the Borg had a network of transwarp corridors and conduits throughout the galaxy connecting one quadrant to another. They didn't need infinite velocity to reach them.

But the Borg were not renowned for their ingenuity and their ability to develop original technology. They plundered it from the worlds they destroyed, absorbing the knowledge and the science until they knew how everything worked.

Still, Seven was still interested, her Borg-enhanced mind racing as she studied the logs.

The amount of data accumulated during those few days where Tom Paris had broken the maximum warp barrier was staggering, and it was all there; the technical schematics Lieutenants Paris and Torres and Ensign Kim had come up with for the drive were sound enough since they used one of Mr Neelix's stories to gain inspiration, which was an unusual choice, but it had led to them reaching warp 10. They had realised the problem was not in the ship itself but in the design of the nacelles. Starfleet ships traditionally designed their ships and their shuttlecraft to have their warp engines arranged away from their hulls. In the case of this experiment, where the ship would be under immense structural stress, the inclusion of a device to reinforce the shuttle's structural integrity made logical sense to her and to anybody else interested in transwarp physics.

Seven also reviewed the shuttle's flight telemetry. The information was still stored in Voyager's database, so accessing it wasn't difficult, nor was it hard for her to see the star chart made by the shuttle's sensors. It was extremely extensive, and proved infinite velocity was possible, and yet there was a great deal of medical data as well which was recorded by the Doctor when Mr Paris returned to the ship and began to evolve into a life form humans could one day become.

As she studied the information on the evolution process, Seven came to the belief the potential of becoming a salamander-like creature like Mr Paris had become was a one in a million chance, since humanity was changing more and more each day. It was like behaviour- people were changing each day, so Seven had little idea if one-day humans would become such creatures. She hypothesised the evolution into the salamander-like creatures was a possibility, but not the possibility. It had only taken place because of special circumstances.

She didn't bother with the part where Mr Paris had taken Captain Janeway in his evolved, unthinking state, and broke the maximum warp barrier once more, this time making Janeway evolve into a salamander-like creature, resulting in the Doctor coming up with the anti-proton treatment to reverse the condition.

Seven didn't care about that, she was more interested in the warp 10 ship, the shuttlecraft Cochrane. While the effects resulting in the mutation of the crew was a troubling problem, Seven believed the theory and the technology was sound, but in typical fashion, none of the crew had bothered looking into the technology after Janeway and Paris were rescued and restored to normal. It wasn't stated in the logs but Seven had been freed from the Borg Collective long enough to read between the lines, and she gathered the crew had decided to wait until the ship had gotten back to Earth, to where qualified scientists would have the proper resources to solve the problem. A more cynical part said it was simply due to hurt pride.

Whichever one it was, Seven decided it wasn't her problem. She had long since stopped truly caring about the weird emotional practices of her crewmates, and now she more or less decided to not try to emulate them because she knew it was possible she'd get something wrong.

But in this case, it was just another example of how foolish the crew could be. The solution to the warp 10 problem had been a simple matter for them to overcome, surely it wouldn't be difficult to exercise their intellects a second time? The moment the thought was out of her mind, Seven wondered if it would be a good idea or not to exercise her skills in sarcasm, but she decided against it as she got to work.

As she reviewed the data in the Astrometrics lab, Seven's mind raced as she tried to think of what could be done to stop the crew from undergoing mutations like the ones that had afflicted the Captain and Mr Paris.

While she was concentrating the doors to the lab opened and Commander Chakotay strode in. The first officer paused as he saw her sitting on one of the steps leading up to the observation platform.

"Seven?" he asked questioningly.

Seven stood up with military precision, hiding her wince with an ease that came with practice - the biosuits she wore did their job of soothing the injuries caused by her implants, but they were too tight sometimes on her frame - placing the padd on the console. "Commander?" she said, refusing to even tell the first officer what she'd been doing.

Chakotay, however, was interested. "What were you looking at?" he asked curiously.

Seven sighed and handed him the padd. Chakotay read only a few lines before he looked up in surprise at the former Borg drone. "Why are you interested in this?" he asked.

Seven had been expecting this. "I was reviewing the previous logs of Voyager," she replied quietly, "I was fascinated to discover Voyager had broken the maximum warp barrier."

Chakotay nodded, looking like he wanted to say something, but he thought twice about it; that was one of the reasons why she respected the first officer even though she did her best to keep him at arms length after he had managed to break into her mind when she had tried to take over the ship immediately after Species 8472 had been repelled and defeated, Chakotay knew when to speak and when to keep his peace.

It wouldn't surprise her in the least if he had some Borg-related comment to make, but she was grateful he wasn't saying a word; she had enough people talking about the collective in front of her or behind her back, too many times for her liking.

"It's a pity it didn't work out," Chakotay said instead, his eyes not giving away what he was feeling before he looked up at her again, his expression quizzical, "Why are you interested in it now?"

"I am trying to discover a way of making it work without the mutagenic effects," Seven replied promptly, making the commander sigh, and when she looked at him questioningly he realised he had no choice but to explain.

"Don't think we just gave up on it, Seven," Chakotay began, "but after the transwarp flight when both the captain and Paris were transformed into those creatures, there was an in-depth study into how to protect our genetic codes from the effects of breaking the transwarp barrier and travelling at infinite velocity. B'Elanna herself spent three whole weeks trying to figure out a way of shielding our bodies from the effects, and Harry I think worked for slightly longer, but nothing worked. In the end, the captain became tired of their lack of high-quality work, she permanently shut down the project. Paris backed her up. He said he didn't want anybody else to have to go through the same things he had, even if crossing the threshold was the greatest experience in his life."

Seven had already begun to make her plans to study the transwarp research, particularly the later editions where Lieutenant Torres and Ensign Kim had worked to try to find a way of isolating the crew from the effects of infinite velocity travel. But she wanted to clarify something that suddenly entered her mind. "Is that an order for me not to pursue this line of research, commander?" she asked with her usual precision.

Chakotay sighed. "Seven, as far as I am concerned, so long as your research doesn't cause any problems for the crew, you can study the transwarp research to your heart's content. In fact, with the knowledge the Borg has gleaned from races such as the Voth, and Arcturis's people, and all the other warp specialists that have been assimilated over the years, I have no doubt you can truly make something work," Chakotay paused with an awkward, quiet swallow when he saw the woman's strange expression at the mention of assimilation and of the different people whom the Borg had mutilated over the years, but he hadn't meant to hurt her, though he wasn't sure what it was she was feeling, he went on regardless. "But make sure it doesn't cause problems for your duties as well," he felt the need to add, knowing how much pride the former Borg drone took with her work.

Seven's jaw moved, clenching but there was a thoughtful tilt to the head that told Chakotay, who'd had only a year of the woman's expressions and mannerisms to work out although she didn't like what she'd just heard, she had accepted it and he sighed inwardly. There were times he was seriously worried Kathryn's project to return Seven of Nine into a fully adjusted human; while he had no problem with the morality behind it, there were moments where he felt she was just asking for too much since Kathryn seemed to be content with giving Seven a few lessons here and there, particularly whenever Seven made a faux pax, but she seemed more keen to let the former Borg drone settle in on her own.

Chakotay wished he could say something to her there and then, something that would make her realise he didn't mean any offence, but truthfully there was very little he could actually say to her; he and Seven were content to keep each other at arms length ever since that mess where he had gone into her mind when they'd been mentally connected. There was something not quite right about seeing her childhood memories, but truthfully he did wonder why he was so much more cautious around her. His best guess was because Seven reminded him of Riley, though she was far more innocent than Riley had been…

Pushing those memories to the side - they weren't important right now - Chakotay realised he was outstaying his welcome here.

"Look, just see what you can do with the transwarp theories," he said at last as he prepared to leave, "good luck, Seven."

As he left, Chakotay inwardly sighed and asked himself if he should change his manner around Seven. But while he had learnt to accept her onboard Voyager, despite a couple of near misses, he had to accept he still had issues where former Borg drones were concerned.

Still, he would hopefully be over them in time.

* * *

As she watched Chakotay leave the Astrometrics lab, Seven couldn't help but be torn. On the one hand, she was seriously tired of everyone reminding her about her time with the Borg collective, but on the other, she wondered why some of the more tactful members of the crew honestly thought she cared.

The last year of being separated from the collective had done a great deal for Seven, it had helped her grow as an individual, opening her mind to opportunities she had never had linked to the Hive Mind, but truthfully she was uncertain how she felt about assimilation. The part of her which was still a Borg, the part which was still a believer in the embodiment of perfection, saw assimilation differently from everyone else; she saw it as the blending of mind and body, and that it was a beautiful thing to be a part of though she wasn't foolish enough to tell the crew. They would shun her if she said anything, and that was the last thing she needed - she was lonely enough as it was, she didn't need to make things worse.

But the other part of her, the part which was still Annika Hansen which had been given a chance to shine once more after being submerged for so long, the part of her which yearned to be free of Borg technology and Borg influence, and had actually gone through assimilation and knew of the pain and the panic which came with the process, was disgusted with the whole thing.

Seven pushed those thoughts aside and looked at the transwarp research. She wasn't sure how long it would take her to go through with it all, but the only consolation she had was, despite their lack of any true expertise or experience, the Voyager crew actually had a great deal of information about transwarp technology, next to her own experience and knowledge, and with the fairly recent experience with Arturis and the Dauntless, her knowledge of Quantum Slipstream Drive could certainly be useful in this case.

As she considered this line of research, Seven quickly realised she would need to make a start of it when she was undergoing regeneration in her alcove in the cargo bay - she had only discovered the transwarp experiments conducted in Voyager's second year in the Delta Quadrant when she had made one of her studies into the crew's experiences, but she didn't have the time to study the work and figure out a way of combining her own knowledge with the type of transwarp technology Lieutenants Paris, Torres and Ensign Kim had devised to make something that would get the crew home.

Home….

Seven actually wondered what home was. She had few memories of her childhood, not helped by how her irresponsible parents had dragged her across the galaxy to study the Borg, not realising they were making a stupid mistake…

No, she was doing this for redemption, but as soon as the thought crossed her mind she pushed it aside. Seven placed the padd back onto the console, and she began downloading every scrap of knowledge the computer had concerning transwarp technology and subspace warp theory into the small computer. She downloaded information about the translocator technology Voyager had encountered twice already, she downloaded everything the crew had learnt about Quantum Slipstream Drive technology, figuring the knowledge would probably fill in any gaps; while the Slipstream Drive was of a different class of propulsive technology to the transwarp experiments Voyager undertook two years before, Seven included it anyway along with her own knowledge of transwarp theory since both sciences could help her with her work. The translocator was also included for that reason, though whether it would do any good, she didn't know.

* * *

Once she was finished with her duty shift, Seven start to head back for the cargo bay to regenerate, though she was, as she had heard Mr Paris say once or twice, going to 'catch a bite to eat' when she reached the cargo bay rather than head for the mess hall; the Doctor's prescription of making her eat and ingesting food once her digestive system had healed after being atrophied for nearly two decades was both a pleasure and yet a curse for Seven.

The part of her which was still Annika Hansen yearned for all the recipes to the traditional Scandinavian meals which had been a staple of her diet before her assimilation, but the problem was her digestive system was still healing, so there was only so much she could eat, so she was relegated to eating meals which satisfied her still healing stomach, but the basic foodstuffs available on Voyager gave her a limited diet.

Sometimes she spent time in the mess hall, but Seven was more than aware of how unsettling her presence was to the crew, and although the captain regularly insisted she spend time with the crew, she had no intention of following that suggestion/order. There were times where Seven merely wished to be left alone, and this was one of them, and besides the captain never seemed to really give a thought at all about whether she or the crew were comfortable around each other.

Entering the cargo bay, she immediately went over to the control panel built into the arm shield of her alcove and downloaded everything from the padd into the computer as she prepared for the regeneration cycle, knowing when she left the alcove again she would have a clear vision of how to proceed with her research into transwarp technology.

It was an integral part of Borg technology, using the alcoves to transmit information and data into the minds of the regenerating Borg drones and use their mental faculties to solve problems while the drone was in a dormant state, which was most efficient as the drone did not have any instructions being passed into their mind by the Hive.

Seven knew that the idea behind this would…concern the Doctor and Janeway, to name a few, but truthfully she really did not care. The crew knew she had to use the regeneration unit so what difference did it make if she used it to download data into her brain?

Stepping into the alcove, Seven felt the neural clamps click in and she closed her eyes as her implants were recharged, and she closed her eyes as the regeneration cycle took hold. The moment she relaxed, the information streamed gently into her mind.

While she was regenerating Seven found herself relaxing as her mind went over the problems of transwarp. She went through the logs taken during the transwarp experiments, studying the sensor telemetries during the two transwarp flights which had gathered a vast amount of data which was sent to the stellar cartography department and stored as star charts in Voyager's computer.

Seven had included the charts in the padd so she could see for herself just how detailed they were, but that made sense considering the augmented nature of the subspace field.

For the rest of her regeneration cycle, Seven studied the transwarp experiments, and she came up with a host of theories about why it had gone wrong though at this point in time Voyager's facilities lacked the resources to really put her theories to the test to see if she was right. She also had a few ideas of what could be done to stop the mutagenic effects which had hyper-evolved Lieutenant Paris and Captain Janeway into amphibious lifeforms, but again Voyager just lacked the resources which could answer some of her questions.

While in her regeneration cycle, Seven decided to discount the 'infinite velocity' form of transwarp travel. It was too risky and there were certain questions she had concerning the whole theory that she could not answer at this point; for infinite velocity to be fully understood, there would need to be planetary resources, more ships for testing the various theories and approaches which would mean infinite velocity could come about, and while Seven could theorise during her regeneration cycle ways of shielding the crew from the mutagenic effects of the speeds involved, she could not put them into place now.

And yet… According to Starfleet records, the enigmatic entity known as the Traveller had managed to take the Enterprise D through several galaxies, and beyond. From what Seven had worked out about the Traveller via the downloaded records, it seemed the being used the power of thought to travel at such velocities, which likely explained why the Enterprise crew had managed to survive without experiencing the type of effects to their genetic code like Mr Paris had but she could not be sure.

It could also be that at their present position on the evolutionary ladder humans were just not suited to using their thoughts in the same manner.

But there were other ways of travelling faster than conventional warp speeds. Races like Arturis' people, the Borg, and the Voth and several others were proof of that. Other races used different types of technology to move light years across space, and there was an answer to every problem. She knew that it was a fundamental truth of science.

As she studied the infinite velocity type of transwarp drive and what Voyager had managed to glean from the experience with the Voth, and what she knew about the Traveller's work to the Enterprise, Seven realised that the only thing all three of them had in common was that they were just enhanced warp fields.

Maybe that was the answer.

Yes, it was just possible. But then she thought about the other methods of transwarp travel; the conduits the Borg used, and the Quantum Slipstream drive technology they'd recently encountered. They either folded a small section of subspace over itself like a wormhole, or they simply drove tunnels into subspace, or they created tunnels that allowed them to 'surf,' she believed the term was, to their destination. While there were many possibilities, Seven decided that to make things easier, it would be a good idea to go with the more simplest option. It wouldn't be difficult to come up with an enhanced warp field, one that took advantage of the deeper layers of subspace as the Borg transwarp conduits did.

As she settled into the cycle, Seven got to work.

* * *

When her cycle was over and feeling refreshed since her implants were fully recharged, Seven stepped out of her alcove and mentally went over the duties she had today after she made sure everything she had worked out during her regeneration cycle was safe in her database, and she downloaded a copy onto a spare padd she kept on the console nearby while she checked her duty shift schedule. Nothing really special, just the mundane things before she headed out of the room after picking up a padd with a collection of classical literature stored on it - it was better than just referring to it as the cargo bay, but Seven could not shake off the part of her mind which belonged to Annika Hansen which screamed for some degree of normality instead of being locked in this cage! - and walked down the corridors but she couldn't get the part of her which yearned for a proper place to live to be silent.

While outwardly the thought of living in a massive, cold cargo bay didn't get to her, Seven had often wondered to herself why Janeway seemed determined to keep her in the cargo bay, but she had learnt a while back not to waste her breath with the irritating woman. It wouldn't be difficult for the engineering crew to move or to rig up some kind of regeneration unit so she could regenerate in peace.

In fact Seven had once asked Janeway why she wasn't getting a set of quarters to herself, but the moment the question had left the tip of Seven's tongue, she saw Janeway's eyes tighten ever so slightly - an ordinary human may not have noticed, but a particularly observant one would have picked up on the slight shift of body language, how she shifted slightly, her eyes tightening, but Seven was more than human. Her cybernetic optical implant had effortlessly spotted the body language change, and she had known before the captain even opened her mouth her question would be shot down. And it was.

Janeway had said it would be 'inappropriate' for her to have some quarters to herself.

At the time Seven had wondered if the captain was worried she might assimilate the room or something along those lines, but as the year had passed and she had been exposed to more of the prejudice that came with being a former Borg drone, she had wondered if Janeway was deliberately keeping her from a set of quarters because 'the Borg don't need quarters' or some prejudiced thing like that. It had also occurred to Seven that if she performed like one of the circus animals she had watched in the old film 'Dumbo' which featured an elephant flying (illogical in itself; it was impossible for elephants to fly since their sheer weight made it impossible) that she'd found in the database during her quest to learn more about humanity so she could better comprehend it after being locked out of it for nearly two decades, then she would be rewarded for her efforts. The thought alone made Seven of Nine think the Collective would be better, but what made it worse was the implication Janeway didn't even realise how her so-called 'protege' felt about it.

If the captain thought her own prejudice was unnoticed, then she would be in for a shock.

But as she walked through the corridors, she pushed it out of her mind. But she had something else to think about - Seven held back the urge to roll her eyes at how everyone she came across either averted their eyes and pretended not to notice her presence or they would just stare at her briefly before they went about their own duties.

She had been on the ship for a year and it never failed to amaze her with just how hypocritical Starfleet's precious mission was - to seek out new worlds and meet new races, they said that and yet whenever they encountered one of their own people who had been assimilated by the Borg, they would either stare openly at them or glare at them with dislike and judgement.

_Not that my parents ever had a good thing to say about Starfleet_, Seven dryly thought to herself, remembering how she had connected their minds together in the Hive when she'd been shoved into a Maturation chamber, but she pushed those thoughts aside.

Sometimes she didn't know why she bothered. She had spent the last year trying to fit in, and while she had made blunders here and there, she didn't understand why Janeway kept telling her to be more outgoing with the crew and yet didn't seem to care about teaching her on how to interact properly.

The only person who seemed to give her those lessons was the Doctor, but that was only because the hologram had gone through much the same thing, but he didn't have the same problems she had; he may have been a hologram, but he wasn't held responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions.

She pushed those thoughts aside when she passed the small, brightly dressed Naomi Wildman.

The half Ktarian girl gaped at her and cowered away so then the passing ex-Borg drone did not notice her.

Despite letting out an exasperated sigh at the boring and rather predictable response to her presence, Seven didn't bother to acknowledge the girl - she didn't know how to make the girl see she was not dangerous and that she really did not care at all about assimilating the crew - with the IQ of the ship shifting between moments of brilliance and ingenuity shifting now and then, she doubted it would make a difference if anyone was assimilated, and she gathered from the girl's body language every time she met her Naomi would either run off in fright or just gape at her in shock and terror. She just walked on her way, trying to ignore the way the part of her which was still Annika Hansen cried with the despair of being lonely.

She went into the Mess Hall and, ignoring the irritating stares, she went to a replicator and ordered a small meal and something to drink in order to further drag her stomach and digestive system out of entropy, and she looked around for an empty table and went towards it and she began to eat, making sure that her body language clearly said _**'stay away from me, just leave me alone!'**_

While she ate her meal, she read from the padd. While she found some of the novels the captain had forced her to read, she had developed an interest in literature that went beyond the captain's tastes. Jules Verne and HG Wells may have gotten their facts wrong here and there about how the concepts of their ideas actually worked, but overall the plots of their stories were fascinating for her. Charles Dickens stories about the people of Victorian England, and William Shakespeare's works were also interesting since they went deeper into the human psyche, and they broadened her mind in ways the captain's choices of literature simply could not, though she found putting those ideas into practice on a ship travelling in unknown space to be virtually impossible.

Sometimes Seven wished the captain had pointed her in the general direction of the literary database and let her discover things for herself, but the former Borg drone knew only too well the if that had happened then there was the possibility she would never have been able to find more interesting forms of fiction.

Just as Seven was getting into her stride, she wondered more about the transwarp project she had set for herself. She looked up from her reading to watch the rest of the crew and their interactions as she usually did. Once more she was unsurprised none of them looked in her direction, and she shook her head slightly, wondering to herself whether or not she'd be better off not trying to fit in. But as she moved her head, she spotted Neelix taking a sloping bowl full of some kind of concoction Seven instantly felt sympathy for whomever the Talaxian cook was heading for before she went back to her reading.

While she had some ideas with how to take it, she decided to just focus on her tasks and work on the transwarp theory in her spare time. She already had an idea of how to make it work, but she would need time.

Truth be told it hadn't taken Seven long to figure out a way of creating a transwarp drive theory that actually worked; it was actually easy, all she'd needed to do was to create a warp field formula which used the same subspace domain a typical Borg transwarp corridor used with the folding effect of a translocator.

But it would not work, and she just didn't have any idea why.

It should have worked. The warp field would essentially just do what it conventionally did without any new equipment put into the ships' already existing systems, except it would just distort space on a completely different level without any discrepancies in the amount of energy used.

And yet in each simulation she had run so far, the theory just didn't work when it should work. It didn't make any sense; Voyager's warp engines had been able to break the Quantum barrier during that mess with Arturis, but what was the problem here?

Was what she was doing more intricate?

Yes, that must be it… Seven left the cargo bay, and headed towards the mess hall when she realised she couldn't spend another minute in this place; it wasn't the best place for her to concentrate on something so intricate. She checked the time on the way out, on the nearby wall panel.

21:00 hours.

Good, that meant she could find something to do, and she knew just the thing. An hour later Seven lifted her head out of the chlorinated water of the swimming pool attached to the gymnasium. The Intrepid-class starship contained the same holographic facilities for the crew to spend their time off, but because of the power needs for them to work it was considered more practical for the crew to rely on good old fashioned exercise facilities instead of just working out in a holodeck even though the holodeck's computer contained a huge variety of options.

As she swam length after length in the swimsuit she'd had the Doctor replicated some time ago when she had expressed an interest in exercising in the pool after she had witnessed a few of the crew spend time here and had spent time learning on the holodeck with a number of holograms to give her the full experience Seven thought to herself how she could make the transwarp theory work, and she wondered to herself in frustration what it was that allowed a conventional warp drive to generate a slipstream corridor and yet it couldn't allow transwarp.

As she swam length after length in the pool, feeling her implant's energy level beginning to flag a little bit, Seven paused a bit and she swam gently to the edge of the pool so she could rest and gather her thoughts.

Using her cybernetically-enhanced hand to give her the strength to hold on, the former Borg drone idly floated on the surface of the pool. Ignoring the stench of the chlorine in the air, Seven watched the water as it moved up and down around her.

Moving…

Seven's eyes widened as she realised what the missing piece of the puzzle could be. Moving. Space was always moving, planets and stars moved in their orbits, as did asteroids which were affected by the gravitational shifts caused by the movements of the bodies in a solar system, and solar winds and gravitational waves moved through the vacuum of space.

Excited suddenly by the idea, Seven effortlessly got out of the bath using an acrobatic move using her cybernetically-enhanced hand to give her body strength that would be seen as virtually impossible to many highly trained acrobats, but the former Borg drone didn't care for that since she wanted to get out of the pool quickly so she could get back to her research and prepare the next round of simulations to test her hypothesis.

Once she was out of the pool (she momentarily thanked the ballet lessons she'd received thanks to her aunt Irene while her parents were always busy with their research, completely unaware their greed and reckless streaks would get them, and her, assimilated where she would never have grown up, but she pushed those thoughts of gratitude aside), she went to the shower unit and spent five minutes cleaning off the chlorinated water before she slipped on her bio-suit and high heeled boots and left the gym when the night shift was just coming on.

She ignored the few people near the gym who had probably noticed her leaving it, deeming their opinions as irrelevant as she left and returned to the cargo bay so she could get to work. Seven decided it would be efficient if she used the same technique she had used before when she had begun this research project, using the computer in the regeneration alcove to work on the theory using her brain while she body regenerated.

When she arrived in the cargo bay, Seven picked up the padd containing her research and she went over to her alcove and she spent the next minute uploading a copy of the research into the computer, and when she was finished she placed the padd somewhere safe before she returned to the alcove and stepped into it, once more feeling the clamps hold her in place before she closed her eyes to let the regeneration go through.

Ordinarily, a Borg drone could go without regeneration for some time, but because of the number of surgeries the Doctor had forced her to undergo, Seven had been forced to enter the alcove frequently.

The Doctor had just assumed she was being stubborn when she had told him that, but in truth, it was much more complicated though she had no intention of telling the hologram the reason since she knew the captain would know, and she didn't want Janeway to know.

The human part of her mind hated the alcove and everything it represented - the snatching of her freedom, the dehumanising way the Collective had ripped away her identity and everything that was her as she had been in the process of growing up, the memories of how her parents had gone into the Delta Quadrant thinking they had taken every precaution when in fact they were so out of their depth it was not amusing, only for them to realise their mistakes too late. Mistakes they were paying for to this day, just like she was.

Deep down Seven of Nine absolutely hated regeneration and the alcoves in the cargo bay - she could tell the crew such things were irrelevant but in truth, to her, it was a long way from being irrelevant.

As she surrendered her mind to the regeneration, Seven got to work.

She had done it. She had just spent the last six hours in regeneration working on the problem, and once she had found the correct formula to represent the concept of space itself moving, the whole theory worked.

_Well,_ she conceded to herself, _it works on a padd, but will it work in a simulation? _she asked herself as she went to the nearest holodeck to begin work, her mind on the task.

She arrived at the holodeck and went straight through the doors…only to pause when she took in the scene. Four members of the crew, dressed in workout gear and carrying phasers were getting into position to play a game of Velocity. They were clearly just about to start the game off, meaning they'd just arrived, but when they noticed her presence their cheerful expressions died out quickly. Seven felt her heart clench worriedly when she noticed their expressions.

Before she could say anything, like an apology for disturbing their time, one of the crew members got there first, a woman. "What are you doing here, Borg?" she sneered.

"I came here to do some work. I did not know you were in here. I apologise-," Seven tried to say, but one of the woman's friends interrupted her with a guffaw.

"You hear that?!" he glanced around, chortling with a cruel snicker before imitating Seven's precise speech patterns. "'I apologise!' She doesn't even speak like one of us, yet the captain in all of her wisdom thinks she can be one of us."

"She lost that right a long time ago. What's wrong, didn't you assimilate enough humans to get it right?" another female crewman asked, arms folded and head tilting as she sneered at Seven cruelly.

Seven clenched her free hand in anger. _Why am I always the first person to be blamed for assimilation?! _she asked herself, cursing fate for putting her with a group of people who outwardly presented the universe with a holier than thou image when in fact they were as bigoted as the next species.

Unfortunately the quartet took her silence for something different - Seven felt her heart sink even deeper; she had dealt with the bigotry from the crew enough times over the past year, and it never got any easier for her to cope with, but she wished she had better ways of dealing with it - and they carried on.

"I dunno why the captain didn't just leave her for the B'Omar," one of them smirked. "It's not like she hasn't caused us more grief."

"Yeah, what about the Caatati? They wanted her."

"I heard her in engineering - B'elanna asked if she felt anything for them, but she said no-.'

"That was months ago," Seven interrupted; it had taken her time but she had managed to feel a degree of pity for the races torn apart by the collective, "and I'd just been severed from the collective; what did you expect, that I would feel guilty for something I personally did not take part in?"

"Don't give us that!" the original female crewman snarled, palming her phaser as if wondering if she should use it. "We all know the Borg are linked on a subspace domain; you knew exactly what happened to them."

"We almost lost our warp core because of your transwarp experiments!" someone else accused her, completely forgetting that the decision to experiment with transwarp corridors were the captain and Commander Chakotay, but Seven didn't bother to defend herself then, knowing that in a way it was true; besides, they weren't likely to listen to her anyway.

"Yeah, we could have even started on the trip home by now if it weren't for the Borg! It's their fault - if the collective hadn't assimilated Arturis' people, we could have found a way of getting their slipstream drive."

Seven couldn't believe it. "What about the work myself and Lieutenant Torres are doing to make it possible for Voyager to travel at slipstream?" she snapped.

"It won't work. If you had just worked a little harder, we could have 'adapted' Voyager's engines to travel at slipstream!" a crewman shouted back. "What good are you? We take you out of the collective, and you don't even pull your weight!"

The four of them started shouting at her, their voices overlapping so Seven could barely make sense of anything they were saying, but she gathered enough to get the point; they blamed her for everything that had befallen them; the B'omar, the Caatati, the Hirogen takeover, the aliens who had experimented on the crew, even that time where they'd been put to sleep and forced to fight aliens in their dreams.

They blamed her for all of them, even if she had actually done a great deal to put a stop to it…Seven couldn't take it anymore. She turned on her heels and walked out of the holodeck, eliciting more taunts and even a demand for her to get back there, but she ignored the call and walked through the corridors until she found an out of the way turning so she could lean against the wall and regather her composure.

As she leaned back into the wall, Seven took a few deep breaths to steady her nerves. She had known for a long time there were members of the crew who disliked her simply because she was a former Borg Drone, but while she had often been sniped at once or twice on occasion it had never happened on that scale before. What she had never known was how many of the crew blamed her for several of the problems that had cropped up over the past year.

Despite everything she had done, the things she had learnt over the past year, the pain she had gone through, the crew still didn't accept her. It was at that point Seven came to a horrific realisation and came to terms with the truth.

She had no place on Voyager. She was not a member of the crew, and she never would be. They would never see her as one of them. In her mind, she pictured all of those times those crew members had looked at her scornfully, stared shamelessly at her with contempt, how Naomi Wildman shied away from her in terror every time they met in the corridor. If she didn't need any more proof she would never be accepted, it was during those instances.

Seven shook her head and headed back for the cargo bay so she could shut herself away from the crew.

As she walked through the double doorway, Seven looked around fearfully, worried she was going to find someone else there, someone who was going to heap more abuse on her, but fortunately, the cargo bay was empty.

She cast her eyes around the room, taking in the sinister alien technology that was the collection of Borg regeneration alcoves. The emotion was not something that came easily to Seven, but she still felt it deep down while the crew misunderstood the fact she did have them, and she felt nothing but hatred in that second.

Hatred for her parents for dragging her here to the Delta Quadrant when they could have just left her home in the Alpha Quadrant - yes, she would be wishing every day for word of what had happened to Magnus and Erin Hansen, but at least she wouldn't have had her life torn out from under her legs.

Hatred for the Borg for tearing her mind and body apart, leaving her with nothing but _threads _to work with as she struggled to work out what she could mend to get everything right in the end.

She had spent the last nine months struggling to rebuild a life for her self even though she had nearly twenty years blanked out with memories of being Borg, and the only memories she had of being an individual was when she had been a child!

But most of all, Seven felt hatred towards the crew of Voyager for pressuring her to be human, expecting her to become like them and lashing out at her whenever she either got something wrong or didn't act the way they expected to. But most of all, she felt hatred towards Captain Kathryn Janeway for making her life more impossible than it needed to be.

But the worst part of it was Janeway was as prejudiced as the rest of the crew, she was more cunning than those four on the holodeck. She was more subtle. She had caught signs of her patronising attitude more than once, and she was tired of it.

Seven closed her eyes and took a deep breath while she trembled with her anger. Being angry was not going to help. She was about to step into the alcove to begin a regeneration cycle. She just wanted to end it and rest and approach things differently later, but as she was stepping into the alcove she realised she was still carrying her research padd with the transwarp formula on it. A formula which would work. Something so simple and straightforward the crew would be home in no time.

She lifted the padd up.

Seven was tempted to erase everything she had worked on for the last few days, deeming the Voyager crew unworthy of such a gift. A part of her argued against her, saying she was being petty. But she was not a member of the crew, and even if she gave them transwarp nothing would change, and as Janeway had said to her in astrometrics before Arturis' deception was revealed she knew she was afraid to go back to Earth.

Seven still was, but the idea of spending the rest of her life hiding her implants and being persecuted made her feel sick.

No, she wouldn't delete the transwarp research, but she wasn't going to give it to the crew either.

They didn't deserve it.


End file.
